


when time grows old

by macabre



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, depressed!Steve, everything's not alright
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 06:06:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8390068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macabre/pseuds/macabre
Summary: Canon divergence post Winter Soldier.
The news comes that they've found the Winter Soldier, except he's not the Winter Soldier, and he's not Bucky either.





	

If anyone is surprised, they hide it well. Except Tony, of course, but even he shuts his mouth before any permanent damage can be done. Steve doesn’t even tell them himself, instead it’s all Natasha and Sam who tell the various members of their team, all at different times, all on a need-to-know basis, he supposes.   
      
    “So what now?” Sam asks. It’s not the first time he’s asked Steve this, won’t be the last, and what he means to ask always varies. _How are you feeling about it? What can you do? What can I do?_  
  
 _Where does he go now?_   
      
    The world will always need the Avengers, this Steve knows. His shield lies a foot away in his bedroom, always gleaming, never polished. Lately it’s been taunting him, every time the rally call comes from Tony or Natasha. Assemble, they say.  
      
    Once, it was Steve who led the call. Now, he lets the others, but he always picks up the shield.   
  
    What surprises his team is the length of time that goes by after Steve’s processed the new information. They expected him to jump up, to run to him immediately, no doubt. To bring him home. But what home? Not the Avengers Tower, not even Brooklyn would do. Too much - too much noise and motion, too many memories for someone who can’t remember.   
  
    Steve picks up his shield every time, and chips away at the weight holding him down.   
  
    He has plenty of money. Not like Stark money, but money from wars and coalitions and extra funds that he can’t really even trace. Tony helps him move it around into assets, investments, even an offshore account. He did this so long ago that Tony’s forgotten, and Steve hopes it stays that way, but he moves the money around again, just to be sure.  
      
    In October, when the leaves change, he takes a trip. Everyone assumes they know exactly where he is, so they don’t say anything, and when he comes back, they ask how he is. Steve doesn’t reply, and they mistake his silence as something too heady to name.   
  
    Instead, he takes a trip spanning several states to see what natural beauty waits for him. He sees the trees changing in New Hampshire, walks through a creek in Missouri that’s cold enough to wake him up for the first time in weeks. He doesn’t make it all the way to the opposite coast, but that’s okay. He found what he was looking for.   
  
    The house is perfectly nondescript but the scenery is amazing. They’ll have lots of land, enough that no one can accidentally stumble upon them. The woods are thick enough that Steve and scream and scream and scream and no one hears.   
          
    When he comes home, Sam hugs him. For a moment, Steve thinks he knows, but if he does, all Sam asks is, “Pizza or Chinese?”  
  
    Natasha calls; Steve answers with his shield and his brawn. His heart stays at home. He takes a particularly bad beating this time, and he stays down for a few days in bed. It feels good, to have an excuse. No guilt for those few days.  
  
    Steve never bothered buying a car - it seemed too wasteful. He doesn’t bother now either, but he hopes the owner will understand when it’s returned to him. He packs the car, but leaves the shield at his apartment in Brooklyn.   
  
    He drives fast, too fast - fast enough to draw suspicion, but this part has to be done quickly. He drives less than fifty miles out to where they’ve been keeping him, where he’s been for so long now, but Steve has never seen these roads before. Never seen the serene old building with large gardens and even a tennis court outside.  
      
    It’s dark out, far past sundown, and everyone must be inside. Lights shine out, some silhouettes in the windows. Steve looks to see if any are familiar, but it wouldn’t matter now, anyway.  
  
    It’s past visiting hours, a nurse tells him when he comes through the front door. Steve apologizes, tilting his head and smiling his best impression. It’s his first time, he says, he just didn’t know. It’s not like the staff can dispute that - they’d remember Captain America coming through, after all.   
  
    He has to admit he’s impressed - he’s unsure of how Bucky ended up here in the first place, but he knows it was some combination of Nick Furry and later Tony that kept him here, even after he was discovered. Impressive, because this is the kind of place rich families send their hidden family members, where they can still swim and read and live a relatively normal life, he supposes. It’s not built to hold in supersoldiers, and definitely not ones with Bucky’s history. The floors creak and everything. There are too many windows. A parlor with music playing. Rocking chairs on the patio.  
          
    Bucky has a room to himself in the corner. The nurse that takes him there tells Steve to knock before going in, and not to be surprised if he doesn’t get a response.  
      
    Steve doesn’t knock. They never used to. He does very slowly round the corner of the bed where Bucky sits, hands limply in his lap. His hair is still long and rather matted looking given the new circumstances, but then again, the files they’d unearthed of his time here did say that he was nonviolent as long as no one touched him too long. A haircut or brush would probably constitute too long.  
  
    Bucky doesn’t look at him. He looks straight ahead at the corner. He’s shirtless, in loose pajama bottoms that sit too low on his hips.   
      
    “Hey, Buck.”  
      
    Steve kneels next to the bed, close enough to reach out and touch him, though he doesn’t. Bucky hasn’t reacted to his presence at all. This is the first time he’s really been able to study the scars around his shoulder - they’re frightful.  
  
    “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.” For a moment, Steve wonders if anyone did. It’s possible Natasha had come to see for herself, he supposes.   
  
    There are a lot of things to say, Steve knows, and knows that now isn’t the time for a lot of it. He’s unsure of how to broach the subject, or any subject for that matter, but he decides to say, “You know me. I’m Steve. We grew up together.”  
  
    For an experiment, Steve crouches closer and lightly touches a scar under his ribs. “I was there when this happened.” _I wasn’t there for most of the others._   
  
    Bucky stays still, and doesn’t make a noise. Steve presses his entire palm down on Bucky’s chest. No reaction.  
  
    “Are you cold?” Steve stands. “Let’s get you a shirt.”  
  
    There is a chest of drawers from which Steve pulls a sweater. Gently, Steve pulls Bucky onto his feet where he sways minutely back and forth. He dresses him, then grabs the rest of the clothing in stuffs it in the bag he had folded along his back. Getting shoes on Bucky’s feet is the worst part, because now that Bucky is standing, he doesn’t seem to want to sit back down. He gets one shoe halfway on before he gives up.

  _Barefoot it is,_ he thinks. It doesn’t matter, he quickly reminds himself. It’s too easy as he slides a window open. It’s only a one story drop, and he can carry Bucky. Before he hoists him over his shoulder, he again experiments by resting his entire body against Bucky’s front. The memory of DC flashes in his thoughts, of how easily Bucky could kill him then and now, if he wanted, if he remembered.   
  
    Bucky still doesn’t move or speak. His chest is warm through the sweater, so Steve takes his arms and pulls them over his shoulder, lifting Bucky off his feet.   
  
    Through a window, into a car.  
  
    They drive.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    Because Steve never visited Bucky before, it’s hard to know if he likes the new house. He’s catatonic the first several days, but when he blinks through the haze of a bath Steve has him in, he smiles, still far-off looking. Abruptly, he stands, startling Steve, who wasn’t sure if his friend would ever move so quickly again.   
  
    Bucky trails through the house leaving dripping wet footsteps behind him. It’s as if he’s exploring, but he’s not really looking at anything in particular. His metal hand reaches out and traces items as he moves by, but Steve’s never been too sure how much he can feel with that hand.   
      
    It’s cold enough for a fire, so Steve makes one, and he doesn’t bother dressing Bucky or himself. He wraps Bucky up in a flannel blanket that’s large enough for three supersoldiers, and he thinks about the few times he was lucky enough in his youth for something like hot chocolate. Instead, he heats up broth and feeds Bucky. Bucky even finishes the bowl by himself, so it must be a good day.  
  
    It takes awhile to learn them, the good and the bad days. Steve expected nightmares and wailing, and there was some of that, in times to come. Bucky never really talked anymore, but sometimes the dreams where enough to rattle him to try and ask Steve for something. He was never really sure what Bucky was trying to say in his head.    
  
    “It’s okay. You’re home. I’m Steve. It’s just the two of us, and it’s just past one in the morning.” He’d say something this time to ground him, but really what grounded Bucky was Steve weighing him down. Something else Steve would have assumed a brainwashed assassin would hate, but this version of Bucky loved it. He sighs happily, even after a nightmare, when Steve touches him so much. It’s his most responsive time, as if the nightmare is enough to jolt him into some other form of himself.   
  
    Not a nightmare, Steve reminds himself. Memories. They’re memories. Bucky used to be that person, and Steve has to remind himself, because some days he can’t remember the sound of Bucky’s real voice. Can’t remember what he looked like when he was mad or sad.   
  
    Now, Bucky is moldable.   
  
    And Steve burns for it. What once was a hot attraction, something seared into his very being, the wrongness of wanting his best friend - now the guilt burns even hotter. It’s still his Bucky, physically. Years have come and gone. Neither of them look any differently, and Steve wonders how long they might actually live like this.   
  
    On the bad days, Steve wonders if there is ever any getting better for Bucky. He thinks his old friend is somewhere in there. Maybe. Maybe if he waits long enough, he’ll come back. Maybe Bucky won’t blindly follow him from the bed to the kitchen, out to the porch. Maybe he’ll make his own decisions again one day, and maybe even one day he’ll wake up and Bucky will say, “Steve.” It will sound so loud, so good, and Steve cries sometimes when he sees Bucky looking at him in a way where he knows his name should be.   
  
    But what Steve has now is just a shell, and he knows he would never admit that to anyone aloud, if Sam were to show up on his doorstep one day. He would say it doesn’t matter. It was Bucky. And Steve had always had Bucky.   
  
    Steve moves them around from time to time, just to keep the trail cold. He can’t do it as often as he’d like, because Bucky automatically goes catatonic every time he’s in a new place, and it’s increasingly harder for Steve to rouse him from it. Bucky doesn’t act any differently, he knows - it’s Steve who’s changing, who can’t quite find it in himself sometimes to be what Bucky needs, and that’s why the catatonic stages are getting harder. Sometimes, Steve sits next to Bucky and doesn’t feel or move or say anything, and they can sit there for hours like that, and sometimes Steve likes it. Why would he ever begrudge Bucky, who went through far more than he should have - why should be begrudge him this kind of happiness?  
  
    Steve watches the news. Tony has grown old, and Steve looks the same, and Bucky never was the same. He still acts like he doesn’t know himself, or Steve, just that Steve is home and comfort, and that has to be enough for them both now.   
  
    He wondered if they might come, one day, before they all vanish. Natasha’s hair is grey and fine, and she tells him outside, before they’ve even made it through the door, that Sam has passed suddenly. Heart failure.   
      
    Steve cries, but not there, not then. At that moment, he lets her in and she sees Bucky inside, where he’s sitting by himself in a chair knitting. He still doesn’t vocalize, but he could sometimes still pick up moderately elaborate activities, knitting being one of them. He seemed to enjoy it, as much as anything else, although Steve was the one who usually put the needles in his hands.  
  
    Steve has no doubt that if he gave Bucky a rifle on a good day, he could still strip it, clean it, and reassemble it, all under a minute.   
  
    “He looks good, Rogers.”      
  
    She stays the night, and Steve feels guilty admitting to himself just how nice it is to see her again. In the morning, he sees the tears in the back of Natasha’s eyes, and suddenly, for the first time, he doubts his decision to take Bucky all those years ago. He knows he’s missed out on her life, on Sam’s and Tony’s and Clint’s and everyone else’s.   
  
    He’s missed out on his own life, is what she thinks but doesn’t say, and they part ways knowing it will be the last time they see each other, and Steve doesn’t expect to see any of the other Avengers ever again.   
  
    Steve moves them to their next home, and Bucky’s hair is the longest it’s ever been. Steve buys a new pair of scissors, and pushes him down onto their bed. He cuts it, short, shorter than Bucky likes, which would be chin length, because then he can brush his fingers through it, only he always uses his mechanical arm and then there are hairs stuck between the plates of his fingers. Steve would patiently dig them out, hold them to his nose, then dispose of them.  
      
    Tonight, Bucky looks like Bucky Barnes. He even shows Bucky the old photo he’s got left of him before the war. Bucky looks at it, then at him. He probably won’t realize how short his hair now is for another few days, and Steve knows he is selfish for it.   
  
    Now, when Bucky wanders down into the kitchen, Steve can pretend. The grin is sometimes still the same, almost cocky, expect now it’s lacking the knowledge, but Steve can see him out of the corner of his eye, and when Bucky presses himself into his side, he can think that Bucky would say, _Hiya Stevie. Say, should we go out tonight? Teach those two left feet of yours how to dance finally?_  
  
    And Steve - well, Steve would say, _Anything, Buck. Anything you want._   
  
  
  
    


End file.
